Aligned in Our Work: Principles of Learning Across the Curricula at SMLS

Aligned in Our Work

Principles of Learning Across the Curricula at SMLS

By Brad Read, Associate Head of School, Learning and Innovation

One of the most unique aspects of St. Mildred’s-Lightbourn School is that we have students from Junior Kindergarten all the way through to Grade 12 under the same roof and learning alongside one another. We attend chapels and assemblies together each week on topics related to our values and virtues, or perhaps to reflect on an issue that is important to young women in 2022. We join together to take part in whole-school recognitions like National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, International Women’s Day, Positive Community Awareness Week, or one of the many BigSister/Little-Sister celebrations scheduled to take place each year. We celebrate our community in the knowledge that we remain guided by a shared mission and vision that informs so much of what we do here at SMLS.

This alignment is not only evident during those moments when we gather together as a community, but also in the teaching and learning that is taking place across all of our classrooms each and every day. Our teachers share an unwavering commitment to providing the best possible learning environment for our students, and we have much in common in our understanding of how we can achieve this for our Millies. Each year in June, and again in August,

our teachers take part in a full week of professional development, dialogue and learning. The focus of our time together will vary from year to year, yet is always aligned with current best practices and emerging trends in 21st-century education for girls.

This past summer, our Faculty spent a full day guided by the work of educational consultant and author Jay McTighe to explore and reflect upon the principles of learning that inform our shared approach to teaching and learning here at SMLS. Through collaborative discussion we found that though we may work with students in different divisions, grades and subject areas our core beliefs and understandings about exceptional teaching and learning are remarkably aligned; so much in fact that we were able to distill the contributions of over 70 faculty members into just seven essential principles:

Culture of Collaboration

Learning is a social activity where students and teachers engage with each other and make authentic and real world connections, building on past, present and future knowledge.

The Environment Supports Learning

The learning environment serves as a co-teacher for our students. Space, place, resources, displays of student work, and the assets of individual student cultures are valued and support an inclusive learning community experience.

Photos: Students and teachers from across the school come together in support of our vision for empowered young women challenging and transforming the world.

Learning as an Active Process

Learning is an active process that encourages learners to seek new understandings through the joy of challenging hands-on, and experiential learning activities that promote meaningful connections to the world around them.

Social Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning provides a foundation for a safe, positive and inclusive learning environment that enhances each student’s agency to add their voice in pursuing their unique pathway.

Clear Learning Goals

Learning is a process guided by relevant learning goals that are clear to both teachers and students through shared language about student learning. Students’ prior knowledge, diverse backgrounds, and personal goals and interests are integrated as part of the process.

Understanding of Self and Metacognition

Learners become able to bravely take risks in learning, embrace failure as a necessary path to learning, develop agency, advocacy and meta-cognitive/self-reflective learning practices to self-adjust future actions, and regulate their emotions during the active learning process.

Feedback and Assessment

Learning requires timely and ongoing feedback and assessment from self, peers, teachers and authentic audiences to support learning that nurtures their growth, personalized goal-setting and self-reflection.

During a follow-up week of professional development, our faculty and staff excitedly continued their work with Mr. McTighe, this time shifting our collective focus to identifying classroom practices and strategies that could best enact our identified shared learning principles. Once again, the opportunity to engage in collaborative conversations with colleagues from across divisions about how we are all delivering on a personalized education for girls, proved to be a powerful and affirming experience. Though we always seek to recognize and celebrate our differences here at SMLS, it is certainly nice to be reminded of just how much we have in common.